Tony Benn, the prominent British Labour Party MP, was first elected in 1950. He has been and remains a passionate advocate of socialist ideas. In London, he spoke with Green Left Weekly's Frank Noakes and Catherine Brown about British politics and the prospects for socialism.
"If you take the ideas that make up socialism, they're very, very old. They didn't begin with Karl Marx in the British Museum. In the book of Genesis there's a story about Cain killing his brother Abel. Anyway, the Lord criticised him, and Cain said 'Am I my brother's keeper?'.
"Now that question, 'Am I my brother or sister's keeper?', is the same as 'An injury to one is an injury to all', 'United we stand, divided we fall', 'You do not cross a picket line'. And that solidarity was first articulated in Genesis."
Tony Benn says this long history makes him optimistic. "I'm optimistic because I do not think you can obliterate from the human spirit two things — the flame of anger at injustice and the flame of hope for a better world. On these two flames, you can use any number of fire extinguishers and never put them out.
"If you are going to encourage it, you need a historical perspective. At the moment the Labour Party doesn't have one, it doesn't want to know its history. It has no vision. Partly no-one is encouraging a vision, but partly people are genuinely confused. They don't see a way through.
"Here is global capitalism, which is very, very powerful with the International Monetary Fund forcing Zimbabwe to sell its foodstuffs and Latin American countries to destroy their rainforests — and people don't see a way around it.
"We have to find new institutions ... a proper constitution for Europe that does not give power to the bankers and commissioners, a new United Nations that prevents America from taking it over and running the world like Queen Victoria did a hundred years ago.
"... and how do we develop a popular movement across the world? I'm trying to work on the idea of a Fifth International: we need to build a popular movement that can express itself without ideological narrowness, that develops and builds on the common interests we have."
The British class struggle is confused in part, Benn says, by remnants of the feudal past. "Class in Britain is still
feudal. There's conflict between the landlords and the serfs, whereas people don't see a conflict between capital and labour.
"When Windsor Castle burnt down, people were furious that the government was going to spend £60 million repairing the queen's house, when they were homeless. After all £60 million is peanuts. But it struck that deep feudal chord. In Britain the class struggle is still the struggle between the aristocrats and the common people.
"It's a most unhappy society. But its unhappiness isn't able to be focused in a direction to correct it because there's been no encouragement, no explanation, no leadership, nothing. In Britain at the moment people are utterly cynical about all the institutions — the monarchy, the church, the House of Commons, the British Broadcasting Commission, the employers, the lawyers, the judges, the police — no confidence in anything.
"That is dangerous. It's good in a sense; if the right things were being said, you could mobilise for change. But in the absence of that, it will be filled by the Tebbits [extreme right Conservative MP], the law and order and all of this right-wing rhetoric.
Benn says there is "a rising tide of anger against capitalism", but it is limited by the lack of leadership and by fear.
"The trouble is that the British Labour Party really isn't a socialist party. It never has been a socialist party. But it always had socialist aspirations, a socialist pretence, a socialist argument. Now it has abandoned that and it is trying to become like the American Democratic Party. I don't think that's going to work. But meanwhile, it leaves a great big vacuum in British politics which has to be filled.
"You shouldn't be looking for a new leader or a new party. You should be rebuilding it from the bottom. That's what I'm spending my time doing now — trying to encourage people to put together the elements, of a new popular movement."
He welcomes the growth of the environmental movement. "The labour movement has always had a very strong green element in it. In the English Revolution they came out with the saying, 'The earth is a common treasury. It is a crime to buy and sell the earth for private gain.' I think that's an argument for socialism.
"In a funny way, the growth of the green movement as a separate movement is a product of the failure of the Labour Party to develop its true potential, which was always green, humane and
internationalist. So because it ignored that, the green movement came up outside.
"I've always regarded green questions as socialist questions. But the Labour Party has not been very good about it."
On the union movement, he refers to the miners in 1984-5. "They were described by [then prime minister Margaret] Thatcher as 'the enemy within'. They were beaten after what was really a civil war from the government's point of view. The Labour Party and trade union leaders would not support them. If they had, the miners would have won, and everyone knows that.
"Then it comes back again in October last year with Heseltine's [minister for trade and industry] announcement of the closure of 31 pits. All of a sudden a lot of people who disregarded Arthur Scargill [president of the National Union of Mineworkers] realised he told the truth.
"Scargill is now more popular than the British prime minister, when 10 years ago he was Qadhafi, Castro and Saddam Hussein all rolled into one, not to mention Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.
"Had the miners a strike ballot last October, it would have lost. The miners were very demoralised and isolated. Scargill decided to launch a campaign which picked up Leyland DAF [5500 jobs lost], the health service cuts, wage cuts, unemployment — the campaign has grown with enormous meetings, 15,000 here and 10,000 there — amazing meetings. I've done many of the meetings with Arthur. It has now come to the point where a decision will have to be made.
"The trade unions are more popular than they've been for 30 years. There's the miners and the public service unions being seen to defend essential services. To build on popular trade unionism now would be a route to success.
"The Labour party leadership has done practically nothing to help. There isn't even a poster that says 'Labour supports the miners'. At the demonstrations, the posters are all Militant and Socialist Workers, not a single Labour Party one."
Benn describes the Labour leadership as "embarrassed by the trade unions and by struggle. It is trying to demobilise its natural allies. But Scargill has got this thing going and I think the real conflict is between the bottom and the top. [Labour leader John] Smith and [Paddy] Ashdown [leader of the Liberal Democrats] could easily be in Major's cabinet. We have a one-
party state in Britain trying to run a declining country with a rotten status quo where there is widespread cynicism.
"...the problem is there is not a popular movement with enough inspiration, a sense of history, analysis, a vision to make an appeal.
"The question is, how quickly does this movement build up? You could have a lot of marches and rallies and they're good up to a point. But there comes a time where you have to do something ... The government told everyone they had destroyed the union movement and if they haven't, then you know there will be a collapse.
"The trouble is Smith doesn't want to bring the government down. On the central question of Maastricht, he is 100% with Major.
"The Labour Party is not only not democratic, not socialist and doesn't believe in unions — it doesn't even want office any more. It's quite content to wait for the government to collapse and then pick up the pieces.
"But it doesn't actually want power. There's an absolute major collapse at the top of confidence and this has spread down to cynicism and anger which is not very well directed. If you leave a vacuum of that character it's more likely to be filled by the hard right.
"It's a dangerous period, but it is also a period of potential development. I'm more cheerful than I've been for a long time. I think if the right things were being said, you could really sweep this country. But the Labour leadership doesn't want that sort of power.
"It really is a complete collapse of the British Labourist tradition.
"I think Social Democracy has come to the end of the road by going with the right-wing bankers' establishment. But is that the same for the movement below? I don't think so. If you take the Chesterfield party [Benn's electorate], lots of problems, but we are still a live party. I've seen it change so many times from the bottom, in my own lifetime, that I think that's where the work needs to be done. That's not to say there isn't scope for other schools of thought."